MOVIE NEWS – Quentin Tarantino is a big fan of Joker sequel’s ‘F**k You’ energy…
The Joker: Folie à Deux definitely has at least one big fan, and it’s none other than Quentin Tarantino. It’s fair to say that director Todd Phillips’ 2019 Joker sequel isn’t a complete flop. The majority of moviegoers are disappointed, but there are also those who enjoyed the genre cavalcade that ended – beware, SPOILER! -, culminating in the shocking death of Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix). But during an appearance on The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast, Tarantino championed the film, which he says was directed by the Joker himself.
The Oscar-winning filmmaker said (after World of Reel):
“I really, really liked it, really. A lot, like, tremendously, and I went to see it expecting to be impressed by the filmmaking. But I thought it was going to be an arms-length, intellectual exercise that ultimately I wouldn’t think worked like a movie, but that I would appreciate it for what it is.”
Ellis, author of Less Than Zero, Laws of Attraction and American Psycho, spoke with Tarantino about the recent films that really piqued his interest enough to whisk the renowned filmmaker out of his house and into the cinema. And it was Joker 2 that “lured” Tarantino in:
“And I’m just nihilistic enough to kind of enjoy a movie that doesn’t quite work as a movie. That’s like a big, giant mess to some degree. And I didn’t find it an intellectual exercise. I really got caught up in it. I really liked the musical sequences. I got really caught up. I thought the more banal the songs were, the better they were.”
According to Quentin Tarantino, Todd Phillips would be the Joker
Quentin Tarantino is openly praising Todd Phillips for his decisions in the controversial comic book sequel. In fact, he even compares the director to the title character of the film.
“Todd Phillips is the Joker. The Joker directed the movie. The entire concept, even him spending the studio’s money — he’s spending it like the Joker would spend it, all right? And then his big surprise gift — haha! — the jack in the box, when he offers you his hand for a handshake and you get a buzzer with 10,000 volts shooting you — is the comic book geeks.”
“He’s saying f— you to all of them.”
“He’s saying f— you to the movie audience. He’s saying f— you to Hollywood. He’s saying f— you to anybody who owns any stock at DC and Warner Brothers […] And Todd Phillips is the Joker. Un film de Joker, all right, is what it is. He is the Joker.”
Tarantino also draws attention to the fact that while the original Joker owes his character to Martin Scorsese’s classic, Taxi Driver, Folie à Deux seems to shamelessly borrow from Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis’s film Natural Born Killers (1994). “This seems pretty fuc*ing indebted to Natural Born Killers, which I wrote,” Tarantino explains to Bret Easton Ellis. “That’s the Natural Born Killers I would have dreamed of seeing…”
Source: The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast, World of Reel
